Consumers Perceive Pretty Food is Healthier: Here's Why

Don't be fooled by pretty food. A new study finds that attractively presented food is often perceived as healthier food by consumers.

Food that is presented and styled expertly is often perceived as better or more natural, according to a new study. The findings of the study are published in the Journal of Marketing.

Consumers see around 7,000 food and restaurant advertisements per year, with the vast majority promoting fast food. In marketing materials, food is largely styled to look incredibly pretty. Imagine the beautiful pizza you might notice on a billboard, a perfect crust circle with flawlessly allocated pepperoni and melted cheese. Advertisers aim clearly to make the food more appetizing. But do attractive aesthetics have other, potentially problematic outcomes on your impressions of food?

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TOP INSIGHT

Attractive food might seem healthier for consumers.

On the one hand, pretty aesthetics are closely linked to pleasure and indulgence. Looking at beautiful art and people stimulates the brain's reward center, and observing beauty is naturally gratifying. This connection with pleasure might make pretty food seem unhealthy because people tend to see pleasure and usefulness as mutually exclusive. For example, many people have a general feeling that food is either tasty or healthy, but not both.

In a series of trials, the researcher tested if the same food is regarded as healthier when it looks pretty by following classical aesthetics principles (i.e., order, symmetry, and systematic patterns) compared to when it does not. For instance, in one experiment, participants rated avocado toast. Everyone read identical ingredients and price information, but people were randomly selected to see either a pretty avocado toast or an ugly avocado toast.

Despite the same information about the food, participants rated the avocado toast as healthier (e.g., healthier, more nutritious, fewer calories) and more natural (e.g., purer, less processed) saw the pretty version compared to the ugly version.

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As assumed, the difference in naturalness judgments drove the difference in healthiness judgments. Judgments of other aspects, like freshness or size, were unchanged. The study concludes that these healthiness judgments could affect consumer behavior.

Source-Medindia

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